I admit it was not a great for a long time. In fact it hadn’t sold a single copy in several months.

It now averages more than a sale a day.

I’m not quitting my day job on that news, but it is way better than before.

Lessons Learned:

Simply writing a great book and putting it up isn’t enough.

I know. Most don’t want to hear that. You’ve written a great piece of literature, therefore the world is going to beat down your door. Nope. Being recommended by others matters.

In this case the book was recommended by Bookbub, and that matters.

Build your own email list

At the time of the email Bookbub told me their children’s email went out to something like 330,000 people.

Off of that email and Bookbub website I had about 350 sales and Kindle borrows.

Let’s do that math. That’s about one-ten of one-percent. .1 of 1%

To be able to sell 350 copies from my own list, I wouldn’t need nearly that many subscribers. If just 10% of an email list bought a new book, all I would need would be a list of 3,500 people.

Now, that isn’t easy. But I figure my choice is to either focus on building my tribe through an email list or be completely dependent on Bookbub. And I reapplied to Bookbub for the original Kevin book, which has 48 reviews on Amazon. But they didn’t accept it. Kevin and the Three-Headed Alien they did accept only has 12 reviews. So I will focus on building my own list.

And if you’re a writer then that is what your marketing efforts should be on as well. Building your own email list.

So Bookbub was wonderful! If you can get your book accepted. Take it! But in the long run you should have your own email list to send a blast out too.

That’s the link where you can sign up my Insider’s List (my email list). You get a couple of free short stories, some photographs I have taken, and you will get the chance to get new books for free before they are available on Amazon. Plus I send out a lot of blog posts and other content on that list before I send it here, or on Facebook.